Hello everyone! My name is Paul, and I'm an American living in Spain for the time being. I have owned more than 50 cars in my life, but never a Ford until today. I bought a 1977 Mark 2 Escort GL four door with a 1.3 and a five-speed, and I'm looking forward to learning more about these cars and what is available for (period correct) tuning and performance enhancements.

I export vintage vehicles to the USA for a living, but this one I'm keeping. There isn't much market for them in the USA (not a four-door 1.3, anyway) and I bought it just to have fun with.

If I can figure out how to post photos on here, I'll upload some.

Thanks in advance for all the help this forum is sure to provide, and I look forward to meeting some of you at events, possibly.

Well, it depends on how you do it. But figure... $4000 all in. Shipping, taxes, duty, freight forwarding fees, transportation from the port, etc. If you use all professional help and freight forwarders on both sides, it will be more expensive, and if you do EVERYTHING yourself it can be less, but that's a good rule of thumb, all things considered.

Cost is only one issue, though. It can be a real pain in the neck to navigate the paperwork. As an example, three days ago I had to drop a car off at the port of Valencia to go to Baltimore. An old Citroen 2CV. The port is geared toward HUGE trucks, and is highly secure, so navigating in there is intimidating and not set up for little tiny cars. I only had a two day window in which to drop the car off, and literally on the morning of the first day, after I had already left to drive to Valencia, they changed the port. The boat would now be leaving from Sagunto, about 50kms to the north of Valencia. That kind of thing is normal. Sometimes they change the destination port. You think the car is going to Baltimore but it ends up in Norfolk or something. It's fairly common.

Along with the 2CV, we also shipped a BMW 325ix Touring (an e30 wagon, essentially) and an old Land Rover 88. This morning we received word that when the boat arrives in Baltimore, the Land Rover will be quarantined and searched. Not a huge deal, because we do everything 100% legally, but if something weird turns up, like maybe the engine was replaced with a later engine and I didn't know, the vehicle could be seized and even crushed, right there on the dock. Plus, the search is at the whim of the customs and border patrol officials, but our cost. So they will have the truck for up to a week, and at the end, assuming all goes well, we will get an additional bill. lol

So it's nerve wracking. And a headache. But it's exciting, too, and finding the vehicles is the fun part.

It's a rough cost for Ro-Ro, all-included, but containers aren't substantially more expensive, they are just way more complicated. Ro-Ro is a pain, but you can get the car pretty much ready to go by yourself. Containers, not so much.

The bad parts about Ro-Ro is that there is a very limited number of ports they go out of, and a very limited schedule generally from those ports. Also, the car has to be totally empty and very clean, so you can't take spare parts or extras of any kind inside the car. Also, it has to be very, very clean when it leaves. If it shows up in the USA with dirt or mud on the underside, it can be refused for health reasons. (I think, but am not certain, that the fear is of "mad cow" or something.) So you have to have it very thoroughly cleaned top and bottom, inside and out, somewhere near the dock. Also, Ro-Ro ports are fickle. You must drop the car off at the port in a very limited window of time - generally three days or so, which may not sound like a problem but it really can be. Let's say you find a car you really love and you buy it. The car is in Madrid and the Boat leaves from Barcelona on April 27. That means you'll have to drop it at the port, say... sometime during the days of April 20-22. You have to figure out a way to store the car somewhere, and then get it to the dock in Barcelona on exactly those days, and whoever takes it there has to get it cleaned just before they drop it. And then, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes the port will change at the last moment. Logistically, it can be kind of a nightmare.

Oh, and the final problem with Ro-Ro boats is that your vehicle will be driven into place by people and secured by people, and that means the likelihood of damage is much higher. Ro-Ro ships have insurance for total loss (like if the ship sinks), but not for incidental damage during shipping. Denting bodywork is not uncommon (I think they pack them in pretty tight) and in almost 20% of the cases there is some damage to the vehicle when it arrives. One of our recent Land Rovers had the safari roof kinda banged in. Another had a broken toe link because they cranked the securing straps down too tight, a repair that required removal of the steering knuckle. There is no recourse for this kind of thing, except getting a third party insurer, but that has its own problems. Typically, they have to inspect the car before it goes on the boat and photograph it, etc. It can be kind of a pain. (Also, I have been told they are notoriously difficult to collect on, but I have no personal experience with them.)

Containers get rid of a lot of these issues. The vehicle still has to be clean, but you can load the container in advance and fill it with pretty much whatever you want. A car, three Vespas, ten sets of wheels, some pottery for your mother... whatever you want. Everything inside there is going to be very safe. But the container is just an empty box, so someone is going to have to secure everything inside and build shelves and partitions to keep everything separate and prevent damage from shifting. But in theory you'll be paying someone to do that for you, so they would be the ones to worry about it. Also, container ships leave from every major port virtually every day, so the schedule is much more open and easy to accommodate. The same is true on destination ports, so you can likely have the vehicle delivered to a port closer to where you live.

Either way, when you go to pick it up at the port in the USA you will have more things to worry about. Security is very tight, and you may not even be able to enter the port. You'll need a special pass, which I think it called a "TWIC" card or something. If you don't have it, then you'll need to pay a TWIC-holding trucker a few hundred bucks to go into the port and get your car. He will bring it out for you, but then you'll need to transport it to wherever you live. "Transport" license plates are a possibility, but you have to qualify for them, and you may not, so driving the vehicle away from the port is... unlikely. I would plan on having a flatbed take it to your home.

Then the last hurdle is the initial registration. You will leave the port with photocopies of the relevant DOT, EPA and CBP documents saying the vehicle is legal (assuming it is, of course) and those offices will mail you the hard copies about a week later. You then take the hard copies to your local DMV and depending on which state you live in, they will issue you a normal title and tags. It's always a headache, because the odds of someone at your local DMV having any experience with the process is minimal, which means there will be a lot of head scratching and a lot of phone calls and a lot of "let me speak with my manager..." Budget a few hours to get it done, on top of the time it would normally take. If all your paperwork is in order though, they will usually issue you a title immediately. A lot depends on which country you are importing from, too. Many foreign countries have paperwork that is fairly close to comparable USA paperwork, which makes things easier. Spain, unfortunately for me, is VERY difficult. The paperwork here is crazy, and bears virtually no resemblance to their USA counterparts. There is no "title," here for example. No document of ownership. The closest is the Spanish registration, but it looks weird and very flimsy and officials in the USA have a tendency to look at it and say: "This? THIS?! This is all you have?" Hahahaha!

So it's a process, and not without stress and worry, but if you take your time and employ the right freight forwarders and stuff, it's all doable. But it helps to have very competent friends on both sides of the ocean who can react very quickly. Either you or someone you really trust. I think trying to have a car delivered from Madrid to Houston, for example, while you hang out in Houston and try to let other people handle everything on your behalf, would be very expensive indeed.